Here are two politicians you haven’t seen in the same sentence before: Neel Kashkari and Barry Goldwater.

Columnist George Will of The Washington Post is making the comparison in a column headlined, “Neel Kashkari could be California’s Goldwater.” It’s meant to be flattering.

Obviously, the two are quite different ideologically. Kashkari is the Republican who is touting his moderation on social issues as he challenges Gov. Jerry Brown in the Nov. 4 election. Goldwater is the Republican who preached that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” when he ran against President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Will’s point is that Kashkari, even if he loses to Brown as badly as his 20 percentage point deficit in the polls suggests he will, could end up having a similar effect on the Republican Party as Goldwater did, even as the Arizona senator was trounced by LBJ.

Will argues that Goldwater’s libertarian conservatism was “ahead of its time” and wound up changing the GOP brand for the better. Similarly, Will writes, Kashkari is “redefining conservatism a half-century on.”

Picking up on a Kashkari campaign line, Will notes that the former U.S. Treasury Department official enjoys turning party stereotypes upside-down. In this race, the Democrat is the old white man, an establishment scion; the Republican is the young face of diversity, a 40-year-old son of Indian immigrants.

This is some of what the Los Angeles News Group editorial board said in our June primary endorsement. We recommended Brown, but urged Republican-leaning voters should support Kashkari over Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, saying Kashkari’s focus on economic issues over divisive social issues gave credibility to his plan to “show the nation there is another path for the Republican Party.”